A Conversation with Caitlyn Fox, CZI’s Climate Lead and First-Ever Employee
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Caitlyn Fox, vice president of strategic initiatives at CZI
Caitlyn Fox was the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s first employee, and a few years ago, she was the one tapped to lead the organization’s new climate portfolio.
Fox, vice president of strategic initiatives at CZI, has been at Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s side from the beginning of their philanthropic journey, which, in its early years, prioritized education, science and the Bay Area. But in 2020, CZI started a process led by Fox that resulted in the couple’s first-ever climate grants, fulfilling a longtime intention. And more is likely on the way, albeit with limits.
“Everyone is just really, really passionate about climate. So I have every hope and expectation that this will continue and grow over time,” Fox said. “But there’s no immediate plans for a standalone climate program at this point.”
Like many new and newish philanthropic giants, particularly those backed by Silicon Valley fortunes, CZI has focused its climate funding on technological responses to the crisis, mirroring the outfit’s approach in other areas. Other tech funders have backed ideas like dimming the sun, and CZI has backed an adjacent if distinct field: removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One recent example is a $1.5 million grant to the Yale Carbon Containment Lab, which has not previously been publicly shared. (The couple have also directly funded oceans-related work.)
Carbon dioxide removal techniques of all types remain nascent, yet scientists agree the approach is essential. The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last month, found that the world needs at least 75 times more technological carbon removal by 2030, along with deep emissions cuts, to prevent extremely catastrophic warming. Yet, as Fox and CZI are well aware, there is widespread concern that such technologies will excuse ongoing emissions and put communities at risk.
Fox said CZI chose the topic in part because of a belief that it was underfunded. It seems CZI wasn’t alone. According to ClimateWorks Foundation’s latest report on the sector, carbon dioxide removal received an average of 5.3% of climate mitigation funding between 2017 and 2021, more than double its 2.2% share in the report issued the year CZI announced its first grants.
Fox stressed CZI’s attention to equity in this portfolio. She cited grants to the California climate movement group Youth on Root, writer and activist Catherine Coleman Flowers’ Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, the University of Wisconsin Madison for a project to create “tools to listen to the voices of Latina/o/x and Black communities,” and Building Tribal Leadership in Carbon Removal, a program of Global Ocean Health.
Like many other West Coast philanthropies based in internet fortunes, CZI wields both grantmaking and investments. In recent years, it has not only made climate grants, but also bet on a variety of companies developing climate technologies. Any payoff will up the operation’s budget — CZI puts all profit from its investments into its philanthropic work.
In my conversation with Fox, which has been edited for brevity and clarity, we talked about what Chan, Zuckerberg and CZI look for in climate grantees, who they’re working with in philanthropy, and what the next chunk of their estimated $76 billion fortune might support (hint: more technology).
How did Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and the team at CZI decide to get into climate philanthropy?
Energy and climate was actually mentioned in the letter that Mark and Priscilla wrote to Max, their daughter, on the founding of CZI. It was always one of the issues that they wanted to eventually focus on. We were focusing on the work in basic science, education and the Bay Area. Without infinite resources, we wanted to make sure our focus wasn’t spread too thin. We weren’t really able to turn time and attention to climate, except in the last few years.
We started to look into where CZI could add value in the climate space, with a focus on technology and on meaningful impact and solutions in the next five to 10 years. With that framing, we talked to 50 to 60 experts in the space — funders, climate leaders, community leaders — to understand where there were opportunities. That led to our focus on carbon dioxide removal technologies.
Of all climate technologies, how did CZI choose carbon removal (CDR)? And why did you feel you could add value?
We took the approach of not investing in a number of different technologies, but really trying to focus, at least initially. A focus on impact within the next five to 10 years really narrows the universe of technologies. It’s not the technologies of tomorrow, and it’s not the moonshot technologies of 50 years from now. Both of those are very important, but we were thinking about where we can help scale and provide necessary resources to technology solutions in the next five to 10 years.
We perceive there to be a gap in philanthropic funding. We absolutely need to decarbonize every possible sector, we need to gravitate away from fossil fuels. But we also need to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Acknowledging that it must be part of the solution was an important reason why we focused on CDR.
How does CZI choose its climate grantees? What are the founders and your team looking for?
One of the lenses that we use is: Who are leaders that we can learn alongside and feel confident that they’re asking the right questions? And that alongside them, we’ll be able to learn a lot about the shape of these problems and what it takes to invest equitably in these technologies. A learning orientation, first and foremost, is really important to us. Another thing we look for is nonprofits that are making sure [CDR] scales in an equitable way, like Carbon180 or CarbonPlan.
We’ve also invested directly in some of the technology solutions themselves, like CarbonBuilt, Twelve and Fervo. With those, we’re looking for the potential for gigaton-scale impact over time. Another lens that’s really important for us is equity — not only are the founding teams and the companies thinking about mitigating unintended consequences and safety and permanence of solutions, but also about equity in terms of where their physical locations are sited and how they’re thinking about community engagement. And we’re working with scientific advisors and other funders to make sure we’re kicking the tires on the science itself.
Will this portfolio expand into other areas?
The intention was always to start with a narrower segment to make sure that we’re understanding something deeply. Hopefully, learning about how to equitably and impactfully scale carbon dioxide removal technologies is teaching us about how to scale climate technologies in general, and how to meaningfully integrate equity and justice from the beginning.
Some of our investments are already starting to bridge into other areas. We gave a grant to Fervo to have them explore co-locating direct air capture with their geothermal plants. That gives us exposure to geothermal. By starting with a narrow vantage point, we’re able to go deeper, and that gives us exposure to adjacent technologies. That way, in the future, we have the opportunity to expand beyond carbon dioxide removal.
As I noted in a prior article, Mark and Priscilla have an organic farm on their ranch in Hawai’i. Might we see future grantmaking in that area, i.e., farming, agriculture, food, etc.?
Our venture team has done some ag investments, so that’s certainly on the table. It’s not an immediate area of exploration for our grantmaking. However, with carbon dioxide removal being our main focus, soil and mineralization and things like that abut the agriculture space.
We have explored some ideas focused on ag. We gave a grant to explore gene editing of rice and sorghum plants to absorb more carbon, so that obviously has implications for agriculture. Again, we’re starting with a focus on CDR, but that starts to branch into other areas like agriculture.
Facebook has been criticized for allowing climate denial and misinformation on the platform. How do you think the public should weigh those impacts versus CZI’s grantmaking in this space?
CZI and Meta are completely separate organizations, and CZI is Mark and Pricilla’s personal philanthropy, so I’m not able to comment on Meta or Facebook’s involvement in climate. We’re focused on where CZI and Mark and Priscilla’s philanthropic capital can have the most impact on the climate issue.
CZI funds several topics — direct air capture, gene editing — that are highly contentious. How do you think about that within CZI?
Unfortunately, we’ve gotten to a point in the climate crisis where nothing can be off the table. That said, we are absolutely understanding of the pushback and concerns that exist around carbon dioxide removal. This cannot create the permission structure to enable a reliance on fossil fuels. We need to stay very, very focused on removing carbon from ambient air and historical emissions.
These are new technologies. We have passed the point where we can say, “Let’s just not even explore these options because they may have these risks.” We should instead say, “We need to monitor those risks incredibly carefully. We need to [prioritize] safety, community benefit, mitigating any unintended consequences and sharing the upside equitably.”
It’s our feeling that because they are so necessary, we need to invest in them, but do so very, very thoughtfully. It’s so important for impact-first folks and philanthropies to be at the table, so that we can help ask those questions.
I have not seen CZI join many climate philanthropy coalitions to date. Are you looking to partner with any other foundations?
That’s absolutely top of mind for us. We have to link arms and become more than the sum of our parts as philanthropic funders. One of our first grants was to Breakthrough Energy’s fellows program. Knowing that Breakthrough has put a lot of effort into exploring climate technologies, we’ve been in close partnership with them from the beginning.
The other thing is that a lot of our investments in these technologies have been co-funding. We’re equity investors alongside other foundations or other investors. We’ve worked closely with Prime Coalition to fund some of their work, alongside other funders. We’ve also funded through ClimateWorks, which is a place that pulls together a lot of philanthropic resources. We’re constantly in conversation with other funders. We’ve really thought of this as a team sport from the very beginning.
Parting thoughts?
We’ve learned so much in the past two-plus years. We felt it was really important to not just study this from afar, but to get resources to the incredible organizations and leaders that are doing this work on the ground and learn alongside them — as opposed to studying the issue and jumping in when we felt we had all the answers. We need to constantly be learning and evolving. This crisis is too pressing to sit on the sidelines.
